Saturday, March 22, 2014

(Simpson Bay, St Maarten)- Peter Johnstone was recently sailing on-board his old Gunboat 62 TRIBE in the St Maarten Heineken Regatta.
As described by the event, “there was plenty of hair-raising excitement
in the multihull divisions, including Multihull 1, a.k.a. the “Gunboat
class.” Five ballistic Gunboats hit the line almost in unison for the
start of the round-the-island race. Gunboat 62 TRIBE won the start by
inches, but Gunboat 62 ELVIS controlled the fleet heading into Pelican
Bay and came out on top at the turning mark. But the lead was short
lived. Elvis’ spinnaker failed to deploy properly and Coco de Mer took
full advantage, passed Elvis to leeward. Elvis
fought back and just got inside Coco de Mer at the Long Bay mark and
into clear air. Shortly rounding Tintamarre, Elvis unfurled their
screecher and took off like a scalded cat, hitting 27.7 knots of boat
speed. Elvis finished the 32-mile race in 2h, 44m, 22s to take line
honors. The two Gunboat 66s, Slim and Coco de Mer had a photo finish for
second place. Coco de Mer took the line just three seconds ahead of
Slim. Needless to say, Peter J is having fun sailing “bicycles” instead
of “tricycles” (trimarans) or unicycles (monohulls). The regatta put
together a nice “drone video” of the event with some great footage of
Heineken CSA class winners J/125 STARK RAVING MAD and J/122 EL OCASO and
Pete’s Gunboat division. Check out this St Maarten Heineken Regatta “drone sailing video” (BTW, very cool, very well done).